Net Neutrality Links

This morning, I received an email from Verizon, concerning my DSL service.
The email alerted me to the fact that the federal tax known as FUSF (Federal Universal Service Fund) was no longer to be collected. Depending upon your level of service, this was a fee of $1.25 or $2.83 per month. This was part of a decision last year by the FCC to stop regulating DSL, therefore eliminating the need for the FUSF fee to be collected. Based upon this, consumers should have expected to see a modest reduction in their monthly bills, due to the elimination of the FUSF.

However, in reading my Verizon DSL email, it appears that they couldn’t bear to pass that reduction on to their customers. Instead, they indicate that . . . In essence, they’ve taken the amount of the tax (which they had to remit to the government) and shifted it into a new line item as a fee.

If people can’t understand why we need Net Neutrality, this is just another example of how the telcos operate and why we can’t let them change the playing field.

Net Neutrality Links

In the first part of this year, the US average for cable modem service was US$39.45 a month, while DSL was slightly less expensive at US$35.38. . . .

The report does note that these are standalone prices, and allows that there might be more competition between the two technologies if bundling deals are taken into account. Both the cable industry and the telcos are offering substantial discounts to customers who sign up for multiple services from the same company, and both have the ultimate goal of providing Internet, telephony, and video services.

. . . It’s because consumers don’t have many options that some form of Net Neutrality provisions are necessary, according to the group’s Art Brodsky. “Federal Communications Commission (FCC) statistics showing that just about everyone who has broadband gets it from either the telephone company or the cable company,” he writes. “The FCC has affirmatively pursued the policy of creating this situation, and it’s one of the main reasons we need a Net Neutrality policy. There is no real choice.”

The FCC said that phone companies such as Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, Qwest and other local telcos will no longer be regulated by traditional telephone rules when it comes to their DSL broadband services. The FCC agreed unanimously to classify DSL broadband as an “information service” rather than a telephone service. Phone companies will no longer be required to open their broadband networks to access by third-party ISPs.

After a one-year transition period, the phone companies can arbitrarily end any agreements they were forced to make with independent ISPs.

In other words, the FCC re-wrote the definitions to exclude telecom companies from our nation’s telecom laws! And we are now 9 months into a 12-month period, at the end of which a radical shakeup of the Internet will take place. Mike McCurry knows that the free and open Internet most Americans think is the “status quo” is actually GONE in 3 months. [emphasis L. Strauss]

So it’s more than a little bit deceptive when McCurry asks, “What service is being degraded? What is not right with the Internet that you are trying to cure?” McCurry is implying the exact opposite of what he knows to be true. That’s a lie, and it’s a genuinely sad sight for those who once admired him.

Many college presidents find themselves caught in the middle of the debate, confides a college lobbyist who asked not to be identified. On the one hand, they want to maintain good ties with AT&T, Verizon, and other broadband carriers because in many cases, they provide communication services to campuses. Some college presidents may even serve on the companies’ boards. On the other hand, the presidents do not want their distance-learning and research programs to suffer because of a tiered Internet that would cause their institutions to pay more than they can afford for reliable, fast Internet service.

The Internet has revolutionised the worldÃ¢â¬â¢s media. Personal websites, blogs and discussion groups have given a voice to men and women who were once only passive consumers of information. It has made many newspaper readers and TV viewers into fairly successful amateur journalists. Dictators would seem powerless faced with this explosion of online material. How could they monitor the e-mails of ChinaÃ¢â¬â¢s 130 million users or censor the messages posted by IranÃ¢â¬â¢s 70,000 bloggers?

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